WITH HELMET AND HOSE 85 



five hundred fish swirhng around my crab and 

 hand and head. Similes failed. I thought of the 

 hosts of yellow butterflies I have seen fluttering at 

 arm's length on Boom-boom Point; I thought of 

 the maze of wings of the pigeons of St. Mark's, 

 but no memory of the upper world was in place 

 here, — this was a wholly new thing. 



Often there was a central nucleus a foot or 

 more in diameter, of solid fish, so that the bait and 

 my arm to the elbow were quite invisible. Twenty 

 or twenty-five species were represented, and, like 

 birds, they were graded with exquisite exactness 

 as to correlation of fear and size. The great major- 

 ity were small, from two to four inches in length, 

 and these were wholly without fear, nibbling my 

 hand — passing between my fingers but always just 

 avoiding capture, no matter how quickly I shut my 

 fist. Six- and eight-inch fish also came near, but 

 were more ready to dart off at any sudden move- 

 ment of mine. On the outskirts hung a fringe of 

 still larger fish, hungry, and rushing in now and 

 then for a snap at the delicious morsel which they 

 saw their lesser fellows enjoying, but always with 

 less abandon to the temptation of the moment. The 

 tameness of the little chaps, however, was so as- 

 tounding, that the relatively greater wariness of 

 the larger fish scarcely deserved the name of sus- 

 picion, not to say fear. Another unexpected thing 

 was the rapidity 'vvith which these fish lost even this 

 slight suspicion and learned to connect my appear- 

 ance with food. If I dived in the same spot several 

 times a day and several days in succession, fish 



